


Take Care of Them For Me

by Willaphyx



Series: Tumblr Prompts [3]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Minor Monty Green/Nathan Miller, Minor Octavia Blake/Lincoln, and a lot of it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-21
Updated: 2015-04-21
Packaged: 2018-03-25 04:08:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3796150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Willaphyx/pseuds/Willaphyx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Requested by bells-clarkes on Tumblr: "Instead of your soulmates first words to you, you have a tattoo of their last words so you only know they were your soulmate after they're gone."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take Care of Them For Me

The end of the line came on a Thursday in early June.

 

The Sky People’s defeat of the Mountain Men had bought them notoriety.  There was no fear of attack from any side.  Lexa and the Woods Clan had been remarkably silent.  In fact no one had seen anything other than a passing glimpse of a Grounder in months, with the exception of Lincoln, who had ingratiated himself into their culture.

It was a long two months until Clarke returned, dirty, tired, cold, and hungry, but more herself than she had been since she’d been captured by Mount Weather.  There was still a darkness in her eyes, something that haunted her features when no one was looking, but she was better.

She told Bellamy this a week and a half after she came back when they were re-organizing Abby’s supplies in the med bay.

“I’m better now,” she’d whispered to him, so quietly that he almost thought he’d dreamed it.

Thought he’d dreamed it because they were the same words that he had whispered to himself over and over again in the two months that she had been gone as well as in the time since she had returned.  And now here they were, coming out of her own mouth.  It was all her could do to just nod and not tear up at the words.

“Good,” was all he said, a bit gruffly to try and hide the waver in his voice.

It had been hard without her.  One might even say impossible.  Clarke had become his partner in more than one sense of the word and if he had thought he was struggling with giving up power to the rest of the Arkers when they had come down but that was nothing to facing the idea of leading without Clarke.

The empty spot at the command table , left open by unspoken agreement just for her in case she decided to come back was a physical representation of the hole in his heart that pulsed with every beat.   _Clarke, Clarke, Clarke_  was the mantra that was in his head every night, every day.

And then she’d come back.  And it was like the sun had burst out over the horizon and he hadn’t even realized it was dark.  It was blinding, but oh so good, to have her back, to have his co-leader, his partner, his  _friend_  back.

And there she was, feeling the need to tell him that she was better.  Because he could hear in her voice what she was really saying.  That she was sorry, that she wished she’d never had to go.

That more than anything she had wanted to stay.

But he didn’t need her to tell him those things, because he already knew.  He’d seen it in his dreams every night and when he remembered that look on her face that still cut him to the core.  The sorrow.  The sadness.  The hurt.  The pain.  The  _guilt_.

Clarke had never wanted to be a murderer.  She had always been the best of them, the greatest, the strongest, the bravest.

The ground was cruel.  They’d known that from the beginning.   _No rules, just survival_.  Fight for your life because no one is going to do it for you.

That was the mantra they’d lived by for months.  And while others set out only to take care of themselves, Clarke had fought for everyone.  Even when they didn’t deserve it.

And that same cruel world had turned her into the one thing that she had never wanted any of them to be.  A cold-blooded killer.

He knew that she had nightmares.  The winter had caught them by surprise with its arrival and it’s ferocity and they hadn’t had the time to build enough cabins for all of Camp Jaha’s residents.  So they piled people into the available ones by the tens and Bellamy was one of the few who volunteered to continue to sleep in a tent, burrowed under as many furs as they could scrounge, and hope no to freeze to death.

When Clarke returned, she turned down offers to clear out a sleeping space for her and instead looked to Bellamy, a silent question in her eyes that he had answered with a silent answer.  They had slept in the same tent, curled together like lovers, under a pile of furs ever since.

But they weren’t lovers.  At least, not yet.  They were friends, that was all.  The closest type but still nothing more.  And every night when Clarke started shaking in her sleep and crying out, Bellamy would wake her with a gentle shake of her shoulder and press a kiss to her forehead until her tears stopped.  He would hold her close and whisper that it was all going to be all right, even though that was a promise he knew he could never keep.

It was at night that the world truly seemed to stop.  Everything felt ethereal, slower, magical, better, maybe even a little bit right.

With Clarke’s breath in his ear and her hair tickling his nose, and her warmth curled up next to him, and his arms solidly around him he felt like maybe, just maybe things were starting to go his way.

It was because of the almost fantasy-like nature of these late nights that he wasn’t surprised when she kissed him, softly but assuredly, because they both knew there was no rush.

They had defeated their enemy, they had won notoriety for their people, and they were together.  There was nothing else that they could possibly need, now that they had each other.

Clarke tasted better,  _was_  better, than anything he’d ever dreamed.

Later that night, as he lie awake, staring at the canvas ceiling, the girl of his dreams he hadn’t even realized he needed, draped across his chest, sleeping, more at peace than he’d ever seen her, Bellamy thought that this was his moment.

All his life he’d dreamed of a time when he wouldn’t be scared, when he wouldn’t be running, when he wouldn’t stick out like a sore thumb, when he would be accepted, when he would be respected, when he would  _fit in_.

And he’d found it in the arms of the girl who represented everything he had despised on the Ark.  At least, he thought she did.  But Clarke Griffin was so much more than the Ark’s princess, the golden girl.

She was heart, she was bravery, she was dedication, she was loyalty, she was  _love_.

After that night life had never been better for Bellamy.  They didn’t need to tell anyone about the shift in their relationship.  It was all too obvious in the lingering glances, the unnecessary touches, the laughter that had just a tinge of _something_ that hadn’t been there before.

Before she had come home, back to him, Bellamy had dreaded going to sleep because that was the only time he saw her.  But it wasn’t how he wanted to see her.  He always saw her at her worst, the horror on her face when they’d seen the destruction of Level 5, the emptiness in her expression after she’d killed Finn, and the look of desperation that day that she’d walked away from him.

But now he relished his nights, cherished them, wished for them for the same reason.  Because it meant he could hug her, touch her, tell her he loved her, and know that she was never going anywhere without him ever again.

 

Clarke knew self-hatred.  She knew what it felt like to hate the face you saw in the mirror.  At least she thought she did.

She didn’t know the half of it.

Because nothing, not even thinking that she had killed her own father, could have prepared her for the effects of murdering a mountain of innocent people.

The months alone had helped but she didn’t feel entirely herself again until she came back, until she knew that all along he’d been there waiting for her.  Waiting for the time when she was okay again.  When she was ready.

She truly hadn’t been expecting to kiss him.  But once she had, she knew that it had been the right thing to do and she didn’t regret it a bit.

The pure joy that she had seen in Bellamy’s eyes and that she knew was reflected in her own had been almost enough to make her break down and cry.  But she had promised herself that she wouldn’t.  Not anymore.

So instead she’d kissed him again, one more time, just to prove to herself that this was real, that she was really allowed to have this, that she was actually allowed to  _be happy_.

 

The days that followed were the best of Clarke and Bellamy’s lives.

 

The first time Clarke saw it was when she was helping Abby reorganize the makeshift medicine cabinet they’d managed to build in the med bay.  It was stocked with a combination of the few usable medical supplies that had come down with the Ark and a growing amount of grounder treatments that Lincoln was slowly teaching to Clarke, Abby, and the others who knew a thing or two about medicine.

It was May and it was starting to get muggy and hot.  Sometimes at midday you could see the heat shimmering in the air above the ground.  And Abby had striped off her jacket to work in the almost stifling heat of the med bay.

She was reaching up to straighten one of the shelves when Clarke saw it, peeking out from the underside of her bicep, half covered by her shirt sleeve.

“Mom?” Clarke asked, her hands stilling as her eyes zeroed in on the neatly printed black words of the tattoo.

Abby turned to her.  “Yes?”

“What’s on your arm?” She pointed.

Abby sunk back onto her heels, looked where Clarke was pointing, and pulled her sleeve up farther to reveal the rest of it.  There was a melancholy smile on her face as she held her arm up for Clarke to read:

_“Give this to Clarke and tell her that I-”_

Clarke stepped back and the wind whooshed out of her as if she’d been hit in the stomach.  It took her a moment to collect her thoughts and her words before she was able to say, “but those are...”

“Your father’s last words to me,” Abby said with a twinge of pain in her voice.  “Yes.”

“How?”

“After they...after they floated him.”  Abby paused and sucked in a breath.  “After they floated him I found it on my arm.  There are legends, but I never believed them.”

“Legends about what?”

“I heard them when I was a girl.  They died out by the time I had you, so I’m not surprised that you’ve never heard them.”

“Mom,  _what rumors?”_

“That after they die, your soul mate’s last words appear on your body as a tattoo.”

Clarke doesn’t know what to say to that so she just meets her mother’s sad gaze and nods.

“Clarke,” Abby says, catching her arm as she turns to go.  “I pray that it’s something you never experience.”

Clarke nodded, blinking back tears.  “Thank you.”

Abby nods again, searching her daughter’s face for a moment before releasing her arm.

 

Hunting trips had become somewhat of a social affair.  No longer was there an emphasis on being back after dark, or making sure that you had a large enough group to deter attack, or having a gun.

Now it was time to get out of the oppressive and sometimes cramped-feeling camp and bring back spoils that everyone could enjoy.

At some point Bellamy and Clarke had started going out together, armed only with a bow and arrow each and a small knapsack of rations.  It was a welcome distraction for both of them from the never-ending duties of camp, time for them to just be alone together.

They had been on countless excursions just like this that had been completely uneventful.  And so they might have let their guard down just a little.

There were no more Grounders willing to attack them, no Mountain Men, no acid fog.  There was nothing to fear.

Except for the bear that came rocketing out of the trees like it had been shot out of a canon and barreled right at Bellamy, knocking him over and swiping at him with a giant paw, opening up tears in his shirt that immediately welled with blood.

Clarke screamed.

It took her until then to notice the pair of black balls, cubs, that were rolling around each other on Bellamy’s other side.  The cubs that he had accidentally stepped in front of, much to the mother’s distaste.

It felt like it took an eternity but it couldn’t have been more than minutes before the bear gave Bellamy one last shove with a paw then abandoned him, stepping past Clarke like she wasn’t even there, before nudging her cubs into the brush and away from them.

Clarke dropped to her knees next to him and stroked his hair away from his forehead.  There was a shocked, dazed, and pained expression in his eyes but he managed a weak smile.

“Bell?  Are you...are you okay?”

“I did just get mauled by a bear, Clarke, but yes, otherwise I’m just fine.”

She choked out a laugh.  “Thankfully we didn’t make it very far.”  She pushed aside the scraps of his shirt to look at the damage.  “I think you should be able to walk.  Come on, let’s go, and I’ll treat that.”

He nodded and allowed her to help him to his feet.  He leaned on her the rest of the way back to camp.

 

But then, Bellamy thought, that was how it had always been with them.  One had always leaned on the other.

That was why missing her had been so damn painful.

 

Clarke had Bellamy patched up in no time and he was up and moving around on his own in a matter of days.

It seemed like everything was fine.  Like Bellamy was fine.

That was why, a day after he’d left the med bay and he collapsed in the courtyard, Clarke was at his side in seconds, barking at Miller and Kane who were closest, to  _pick him up dammit and get him to the med bay.  Now!_

Bellamy was almost delirious when they put him on the table and Clarke pushed his shirt up with anxious, trembling fingers.

The bandages that she had replaced the night before when the went to bed were soaked through with blood, his skin was burning to the touch, and the faintest of red lines streaked out across his abdomen.

“No, Bell, no,” Clarke whispered as she anxiously felt for his forehead.   _Too hot.  Much too hot_.  “Someone find my mom.   _Now!”_

Abby was there much faster than she’d expected, her face drawn and her movement quick and sure as she replaced Clarke’s hands with her own and came to the same conclusion as her daughter:

 _“_ It’s infected.  Badly.”

Clarke had already known that but the words felt like a punch to the gut.  “Will he be okay?” she managed.

Abby looked at her daughter. “I don’t want to lie to you, Clarke,” is all she said.

Clarke nodded.  She knew what that meant, no explanation needed.

The next hour was a whirlwind of making poultices and sponging Bellamy’s feverish forehead, and packing the wound with seaweed.

Clarke never let go of Bellamy’s hand.  And he squeezed it right back.

“I love you, princess,” he said, when Abby had left, saying that was all she could do for now.  “You know that.”

She nodded, tears prickling at the edges of her eyes.  “Of course, Bell,” she whispered back, “but you don’t have to say it like this is the last time.”

He smiled weakly.  “If I’ve learned one thing from the ground, it’s that--” he coughed “--you never know when it’s going to be the last time.  And it’s better to act like it is every time.”

“Bellamy,” Clarke whispered, stroking a hand down the side of his face.  “It’s not your turn.  Not your time.”

He smiled.  “You don’t know that, princess.”

“You’ve gotten through worse than this.”

He met her gaze.  “I love you, Clarke.  I always have.  Thank you for coming back to me, I--” Another cough “--I wouldn’t have wanted to die without you.”

Clarke leaned farther over him and dug her fingers into his hair.  “No, no, Bellamy, no.  You’re not allowed to  _no!”_

Then Abby was behind her, followed by Raven and then there was Octavia, who was next to Clarke immediately, reaching for her brother’s spare hard.  She didn’t need to ask.  She could see it all written across Clarke’s face.

“Big brother?” Octavia whispered.

HIs gaze shifted to her and he smiled weakly.  “Hey, O.”

Octavia’s lips quirked up like she wanted to smile but the sadness in her eyes betrayed her.  She leaned forward swiftly to kiss Bellamy’s forehead and his eyes closed then snapped back open when she pulled away.

“I love you, Bell,” she whispered into his ear and he nodded.

“I love you, too, O,” he managed and she stepped back, a heart-wrenching expression on her face.  She looked to Clarke and squeezed her shoulder.

Clarke held the other girl’s gaze for a long moment before Octavia broke the contact and moved away, taking up a position next to Lincoln, who put an arm around her and pulled her in close.  She leaned her head against his chest.

Clarke had to look away.  The sight of it made it feel like her heart was in a vise grip, about to burst.

Bellamy’s eyes were fastened to hers when she looked down.  And she knew.  She knew like she knew she loved him, like she knew her own name.

After everything they’d been through, after everything  _he_  had been through, this was it.

It was only fitting, she supposed, that you would survive the big things only to have the smallest of knives fit in between your ribs to do the most damage.

It was only fitting that he would survive a trip to the ground, a hostile environment, the Grounder attack, almost being burned alive, captured and tortured in Mount Weather, and everything since they’d gotten their people out only to be killed by  _an infection_.

“I’m not ready to let you go yet,” Clarke whispered as her tears dripped down her cheeks onto their clasped hands.

His grip tightened.  “Sometimes you don’t get to call all the shots, princess,” he told her, and the affection in his face released the floodgates.

“Bellamy, no, no, no,  _please_.  Don’t leave me.  I can’t do this without you.”

“Yes, you can,” he told her honestly.  “You can, Clarke, I believe in you.  You can do this.”

“I don’t  _want_ to do this without you,” she told him brokenly.  “We were supposed to have forever.”

“Maybe we already did.”  His thumb brushed away her tears.  “Maybe ours just wasn’t as long as it should have been.”

Her tears were falling fast now.  And when she leaned down for a lingering kiss, she tasted the salt of his own on his lips.

“I love you, Bellamy Blake,” she told him fiercely.

“And I love you, Clarke Griffin.”  He paused then managed, “Take care of them for me.”

And then his grip went slack.  And the light that Clarke had loved so much was gone from his eyes.

The end of the line had come for Bellamy Blake on a Thursday in early June.  And Clarke Griffin, the girl who loved him more than anything, was more broken than she known it was possible to be.

 

Clarke couldn’t bear to sleep in their tent without him.  She couldn’t bear to look at it.  So she sent Raven in to gather her things and asked for that one extra shirt she knew he had, probably hung over the back of his chair, because she needed to remember what he smelled like.

Already the memory of his smile, of his taste, of his touch, of his laugh, of his presence was fading from her memory.  She was holding onto it with all the strength that she had but still it was slipping farther away.

Abby was with her when Raven brought her the shirt, folded neatly.  She hugged Clarke softly, squeezing her and whispered, “I’m always here if you need me” into her ear.  Raven waiting for Clarke’s nod of affirmation then left, her shoulders hunched.

Abby unfolded the shirt for her and held it as Clarke stripped off her own.

“Remember this feeling,” she told her daughter.  “Remember what it feels like to lose him.”

Clarke choked on a sob.  “Why would I want that?   _It hurts, Mom._ I don’t think I can do this.”

Abby grasped her shoulders.  “You  _have_  to, Clarke.  You have to bear it.  Otherwise there was no point to loving him at all, do you understand?”  It wasn’t until Clarke nodded that she continued.  “That boy loved you with all of his heart.  And after you left, he missed you, he mourned you, he never thought he would see you again.  But he kept going.  He pushed on.  He made the best of it.  You need to do the same.  You  _owe_  him that.”

Clarke nodded and swiped at her tears.  “Okay.  I’ll try.”

“You have people who love you here, Clarke,” Abby whispered, pulling her into a hug.  “I love you.  Raven loves you.  Octavia loves you.  We all love you.  And we’re all here for you.  For as long as you need us.”

Clarke nodded again, and she felt the wetness of her tears against her cheek as the stain spread across her mother’s shirt.  “Okay,” she whispered, and she hated how broken her voice sounded but she knew that anything else would have been an insult o Bellamy’s memory.

“Soldier on, Clarke,” Abby murmured.  “You’re strong.  That’s what Bellamy always said.  That you were the strongest, the bravest, the best.”

Clarke thought she was going to break into tears all over again but she held them back, her lip quivering.

“Okay,” she repeated and pulled her shirt the rest of the way off.

Abby barely held in a gasp as her eyes slid to Clarke’s exposed shoulder.  Right under where her arm met her shoulder, there was a single line of black print.  Clarke didn’t even need to look at the text to know what it said.  Abby’s fingers traced over it lightly, and the sorrow reflected in her eyes was more than Clarke had ever seen.

“Oh, baby,” Abby whispered.  “I’m so sorry.”

“I knew,” Clarke whispered.  “I knew he was it.  But there was always the doubt, you know?  The change that maybe, just maybe I was wrong.  I thought Finn was it, once, maybe.  Then Bellamy came along and I knew I was wrong.  I thought that just maybe that would happen again.  I guess we can’t be lucky twice.”  She pressed a hand to her mouth to stifle the next sob.  “ _Mom._   He was  _it_.  He was  _it_ for me.”

“I know, baby,” Abby whispered, pulling Clarke back to her, “I know.”

 

It wasn’t until later when Clarke had cried herself out, when all she could do was sit alone, rocking herself back and forth in a dark corner of the med bay, nose buried in Bellamy’s shirt, inhaling the scent that was  _home_  more than anything she’d ever known, that she allowed herself to pull down the collar of the shirt and look at the text there.

Six simple words.  Printed next to each other in stark black text, like they had been spit out by a typewriter.  She traced over them carefully.

_Take care of them for me._

Clarke leaned her forehead onto her knees and wept.

 

Bellamy Blake had always wanted to belong.  After his mother was floated and Octavia taken, he, too, had been adrift, with nothing,  _no one_ , left.

The ground had been meant to be an escape.  And escape from the life where he was nothing into a life where he was something.  A life with the sister he was never supposed to have but who he loved more than life itself.  A way to find that life, that belonging, that he had never felt before.

And he had found his place.  Just not where he’d been looking for it.

He’d found it in a princess, in a girl with golden hair and blue eyes that shone like the sea he’d never see.  A woman with a laugh like the wind in the trees and a voice that sounded, to him, like angels singing.  A leader who had always been able to do what was right, even when it cut her to the core.

He’d found her and then he’d waited for her and then finally,  _finally_  he’d been able to be with her for their own slice of forever.

Their own far far too short slice of forever.

 

Two years later Clarke Griffin, Chancellor of the Sky People, stood in front of a mound of dirt secluded enough for privacy, but close enough that it wasn’t too much of a walk to the gates of Camp Jaha.

She wore his shirt still, now over a stained tank top and tied at the hip so it fit better.  Somehow against all the odds, it still smelled like him.

She sat down on the grass in front of the dirt and crossed her legs, leaning forward on her knees.

“Hey, Bell,” she whispered.  “It’s been a while.  I’m sorry.  The negotiations with the Ice Nation went longer than we were expecting.”  She sucked in a breath. “Octavia and Lincoln are expecting a baby.  They just told us yesterday.  Nathan and Monty got married yesterday.  It was lovely.”  She traced a finger in the dirt.  “You would have loved it.”

She looked down at her left hand where she wore a ring Raven had made for her out of scrap metal from the Ark.  Its mate, the one Bellamy would never be able to wear, hung on a chain around her neck.

“I miss you, Bell,” she said and her voice cracked.  “More and more every day.  And I love you.”  She paused to take a breath and calm her shaking voice. “I’m still holding out for the rest of that forever.”  She pressed a hand into the small rock set in the middle of the mound, engraved with his name and finally whispered, “We will meet again.”

**Author's Note:**

> Please come cry with me on [Tumblr](http://maytheymeeetagain.tumblr.com)


End file.
